There’s a brewing tension in the medical aid sector which touches on South Africans’ rawest emotions today: a growing resentment at escalating taxes which are being squandered, anger over a long history of the unequal nature of health care, and a deep distrust of the government’s ham-fisted Covid-19 response.

The tinder that has ignited this fire, as luck would have it, is the most critical issue facing SA — how to get, and finance, a vaccine for Covid-19...